FINAL REMARKS.
A man who is not born with the novel-writing gift has a troublesome time
of it when he tries to build a novel. I know this from experience. He
has no clear idea of his story; in fact he has no story. He merely has
some people in his mind, and an incident or two, also a locality. He
knows these people, he knows the selected locality, and he trusts
that he can plunge those people into those incidents with interesting
results. So he goes to work. To write a novel? No--that is a thought
which comes later; in the beginning he is only proposing to tell a
little tale; a very little tale; a six-page tale. But as it is a tale
which he is not acquainted with, and can only find out what it is by
listening as it goes along telling itself, it is more than apt to go
on and on and on till it spreads itself into a book. I know about this,
because it has happened to me so many times.
And I have noticed another thing: that as the short tale grows into a
long tale, the original intention (or motif) is apt to get abolished and
find itself superseded by a quite different one. It was so in the
case of a magazine sketch which I once started to write--a funny and
fantastic sketch about a prince and a pauper; it presently assumed a
grave cast of its own accord, and in that new shape spread itself out
into a book. Much the same thing happened with “Pudd'nhead Wilson.” I
had a sufficiently hard time with that tale, because it changed itself
from a farce to a tragedy while I was going along with it--a most
embarrassing circumstance. But what was a great deal worse was, that it
was not one story, but two stories tangled together; and they obstructed
and interrupted each other at every turn and created no end of confusion
and annoyance. I could not offer the book for publication, for I was
afraid it would unseat the reader's reason. I did not know what was the
matter with it, for I had not noticed, as yet, that it was two stories
in one. It took me months to make that discovery. I carried the
manuscript back and forth across the Atlantic two or three times, and
read it and studied over it on shipboard; and at last I saw where the
difficulty lay. I had no further trouble. I pulled one of the stories
out by the roots, and left the other one--a kind of literary Caesarean
operation.
Would the reader care to know something about the story which I pulled
out? He has been told many a time how the born-and-trained novelist
works. Won't he let me round and complete his knowledge by telling him
how the jack-leg does it?
Originally the story was called “Those Extraordinary Twins.” I meant to
make it very short. I had seen a picture of a youthful Italian “freak”
or “freaks” which was--or which were--on exhibition in our cities--a
combination consisting of two heads and four arms joined to a single
body and a single pair of legs--and I thought I would write an
extravagantly fantastic little story with this freak of nature for
hero--or heroes--a silly young miss for heroine, and two old ladies and
two boys for the minor parts. I lavishly elaborated these people
and their doings, of course. But the tale kept spreading along, and
spreading along, and other people got to intruding themselves and taking
up more and more room with their talk and their affairs. Among them
came a stranger named Pudd'nhead Wilson, and a woman named Roxana; and
presently the doings of these two pushed up into prominence a young
fellow named Tom Driscoll, whose proper place was away in the obscure
background. Before the book was half finished those three were taking
things almost entirely into their own hands and working the whole tale
as a private venture of their own--a tale which they had nothing at all
to do with, by rights.
When the book was finished and I came to look around to see what had
become of the team I had originally started out with--Aunt Patsy Cooper,
Aunt Betsy Hale, the two boys, and Rowena the light-weight heroine--they
were nowhere to be seen; they had disappeared from the story some time
or other. I hunted about and found them--found them stranded, idle,
forgotten, and permanently useless. It was very awkward. It was awkward
all around; but more particularly in the case of Rowena, because there
was a love-match on, between her and one of the twins that constituted
the freak, and I had worked it up to a blistering heat and thrown in
a quite dramatic love-quarrel, wherein Rowena scathingly denounced her
betrothed for getting drunk, and scoffed at his explanation of how it
had happened, and wouldn't listen to it, and had driven him from her in
the usual “forever” way; and now here she sat crying and broken-hearted;
for she had found that he had spoken only the truth; that it was not he,
but the other half of the freak, that had drunk the liquor that made him
drunk; that her half was a prohibitionist and had never drunk a drop
in his life, and, although tight as a brick three days in the week, was
wholly innocent of blame; and indeed, when sober, was constantly doing
all he could to reform his brother, the other half, who never got any
satisfaction out of drinking, anyway, because liquor never affected him.
Yes, here she was, stranded with that deep injustice of hers torturing
her poor torn heart.
I didn't know what to do with her. I was as sorry for her as anybody
could be, but the campaign was over, the book was finished, she was
sidetracked, and there was no possible way of crowding her in, anywhere.
I could not leave her there, of course; it would not do. After spreading
her out so, and making such a to-do over her affairs, it would be
absolutely necessary to account to the reader for her. I thought and
thought and studied and studied; but I arrived at nothing. I finally saw
plainly that there was really no way but one--I must simply give her the
grand bounce. It grieved me to do it, for after associating with her so
much I had come to kind of like her after a fashion, notwithstanding
she was such an ass and said such stupid irritating things and was so
nauseatingly sentimental. Still it had to be done. So, at the top of